Mentally Eel

solve the multiplication equation for each pair of individual digits and arrange them in the boxes just so

AND THEN ADD UP ALL THE NUMBERS IN EACH COLUMN AND GET THE RIGHT ANSWER????

So you start with a grid with as many squares as needed to write one number across the top and one number down the side. And draw these diagonal lines through them. Yes you should extend them out the side.

THEN you basically multiply the numbers that match with each square, put the tens digit in the top triangle and the ones digit in the bottom triangle. Like so:

so once you’ve done that, you start adding up the numbers in the DIAGONAL column/row thingies from the bottom right up to the top left, like so:

You only want one digit (tho I assume if the very top/last row somehow gets 2 digits that’s ok, but ONLY in that position) and you’ll carry over to the next column, like if you were adding normally.

Then you start at the top left and just take all the numbers going down and around and put them together!

It does take up a lot more space and has a few more steps than the more traditional long multiplication, I think, but for people who struggle with that I think this would be a handy tool!

Here’s a screenshot of the more traditional style to compare:

C'Mon, You Know You Wanna...

Propaganda under cut

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.